Oxfam says, “escalated violence is impeding our life saving operations as our staff take shelter from shelling. The international community urgently needs to put pressure all sides to end this horror in Yemen and bring immediate relief."

Decades of poorly regulated arms flows into Iraq as well lax controls on the ground have provided the armed group calling itself Islamic State (IS) with a large and lethal arsenal, says a new report from Amnesty International.

As in the case of Palestine, and unless the international community oversteps its most prurient interests and comes together to help Syria emerge from its current violence, we could well end up with a failed state that is not too distant from the Somali experience, says regional expert and observer Dr Harry Hagopian. We could indeed witness the fragmentation of the country, as many Syrians currently claim is slowly, inexorably happening. Yet there is still room for manoeuvre and hope.